7 Best Chrome Apps and Extensions for Coders

Whether you are a code ninja or a budding programmer, having a good programming environment is a must. However, with the high amount of time we spend in our browsers and on our Chromebooks, finding any coding tools that are not native is a bit of a daunting task. Thankfully, Chrome with its huge repository of apps and extensions, has us covered pretty well. So, if you are looking for some great coding tools that work perfectly in your Google Chrome browser, read on as we cover the best of the lot.

Zed Code Editor

Zed Code Editor is a nice, clean-looking code editor designed specially for Chrome. Fully capable of running offline, its dark UI makes you focus on coding and nothing else. What's great about Zed is that it allows you to edit files locally as well as the ones that are stored on your Dropbox or Github account. Zed also supports syntax highlighting for most of the popular programming languages and can complete your code thus saving you the usual typing trouble. Another unique thing about Zed is that it has no tabs, it exists in a simple Chrome window that can be navigated using the goto UI. Built using web technologies like HTML5 and CSS, Zed is probably one of the best code editors you can have not just on Chrome but on desktop as well.

If you are a web developer, you will love Code Cola. It is a simple little extension that allows you to edit an online page's CSS in a visual way. Once installed, you can treat the whole web as your playground as you edit pretty much any page that you find worth experimenting on.

Modeled on the famed Sublime Text, Caret is an offline-capable text editor with syntax highlighting capabilities. What is special about Caret is that it is a great companion for users who love their Chromebooks thanks to its syncing capabilities. You can edit a file on your home computer and then you can continue working on it whenever you're traveling. Just hook your Google account to Caret and it will let you carry on where you left off.

What Text lacks in features, it makes up in simplicity. Though definitely not as feature rich as the other editors on the list, this one is capable enough to become your default text editor. It has a clean and simple UI and it handles opening multiple files pretty well. With syntax highlighting for most major programming languages, Text can serve as a great, lightweight companion for a budding coder.

Tailor is an experimental code editor for Chrome. With support for Git, it lets you work on multiple files with full syntax highlighting enabled. Though it doesn't have as many features, it is still a very simplistic, bare-bones app that works perfectly well offline. Though still in heavy development, it will be interesting to watch out for future additions to this project.

If you are a web developer, you'll love Shift Edit. The online IDE lets you develop in PHP, Ruby, HTML, CSS and JavaScript with full syntax highlighting. You can then publish those files through SFTP, FTP, and Dropbox to any location you want. Despite taking a freemium approach to an IDE, ShiftEdit does live up to the expectations many web developers have from a good coding tool.

If you are a developer who spends most of your coding life on GitHub, this next app is just for you. Once installed, you'll be able to collect the useful code snippets you find on a daily basis and organize them according to a programming language, project, or goal. Another cool function of Gitbox is the ability to quickly search through your text files. Just enter your query with a # or a keyword and the results show up instantly. What stands out in Gistbox is its simple UI and easy-to-use layout that makes it a treat to work with.